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Cuts to grant for housing associations has “diminished their role” and limited their ability to develop social housing at scale, Jeremy Corbyn has said.
The Labour leader has previously focused primarily on councils’ role in delivering new social housing. But speaking at the launch of a new party document setting out its policies on social housing yesterday, Mr Corbyn said a Labour government would increase the capital grant available to housing associations.
The paper, titled Housing for the Many, proposes scrapping the ‘affordable rent’ tenure, as well as doubling the period over which social housing rents are set to 10 years.
In response to a question from Inside Housing about whether Labour would like to see housing associations brought closer to the public sector, Mr Corbyn said: “Housing associations were formed as a way of building social housing. They were formed to be social enterprises.
“And at one time they received a very large amount of their capital investment needs via the Housing Corporation, and that figure went down, and down, and down – and I’m looking at people in housing associations here. I remember complaining when the capital allowance fell below 50%.
“If I offered every housing association in this room 50% for affordable housing you’d bite my hand off, wouldn’t you? You all would, you know that.
“And so we’ve just diminished their role all the time, and so we go through these incredible debates in the local planning sense about how many social housing units you can get out of a housing association development because they’ve somehow or other got to make the development stack up.”
He added: “And so, yes, we would work with housing associations, we would increase the amount of capital grant available to them.”
Labour has pledged to restore affordable housing grant to £4bn a year – the same level it was the last time the party held office in 2009/10.
It also wants to make the sector subject to the Freedom of Information Act, consult on making tenant representatives on boards compulsory and prohibit ‘for-profit’ housing associations.
Responding to the same question, shadow housing secretary John Healey said he did not want to see housing associations brought closer to the public sector. He added there is “something special” about housing associations.
“What we want to do is to reinforce what we regard as the best – particularly with the social purpose that many have at the heart of their founding objective and their practice.
“Because you see across the board some of the most ambitious developing social landlords with a social purpose. But it is becoming more mixed, and there is a challenge to the trust of tenants and to wider residents for the sector.
“So this is a declaration of intent to support the sector, but at the same time a challenge to do more and do better, and that certainly applies also to councils.”